I've often raved about Berlinde's art on here - in fact, her work even invades my everyday life as arty backdrop - so I'll spare you the superlatives but instead just want to make you aware that if you're Melbourne-based, you now have less than a week left to catch her fascinating We Are All Flesh show at the ACCA.

If you're not yet familiar with her work, the 15-minute interview below offers a great introduction into her vision, process and technique but of course will neither replace the olfactory, visceral and epidermic qualities of the wax, skin, hair and fabrics she uses for her sculptures, nor explain the necrophiliac alchemistic ways in which she can turn branches into limbs, tree trunks into fresh corpses by masterfully applying an organic colour palette (pinks for skin, off-white for adipose tissue, greys/greens/blues for the circulatory system) onto wax with which she can control, halt and synthesise transformation, decay, death.

If you're not in Australia but in.. who knows.. Turkey, you can also catch her Wound show at the ARTER Space for Art in Istanbul until August 26 where she has inspired Vincent Dunoyer to dance Bruyckeresque choreographies in the exhibition space surrounded by her sculptures.

Details for the Istanbul show can be found here. The information below is for the ACCA exhibition.

February 25, 2011 -- Berlinde De Bruyckere at Hauser & Wirth, New York
Wezen by Berlinde De Bruyckere, 2003/04, WON'T BE ON SHOW - click to enlarge
If I've learnt one thing in life it's that Berlinde De Bruyckere (previously featured here) monographs make for very s...

February 5, 2010 -- Ron Mueck at National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Gautier Deblonde's impression of Ron Mueck's London studio while he was preparing for his exhibition at the Fondation Cartier in Paris.
Ron Mueck really doesn't like small things. Maybe he's hype...

Hi. I guess I'm back. Let's see whether I can still werq dis blog, yo.

In case you were wondering, I've been mainly hanging out over on FB(yes, yes, I know... stop looking at me like that - it just so happens that most of my online contacts are over there and it's just been too convenient to stay in touch). Anyway, just like most other anti-social online platforms, I'm using FB in a very unusual and actually useful way so if you care about getting a more daily dose of Wurzeltod®, you can subscribe to its public updates.

I'll try to do a better job at mirroring my FB posts to my Twitter like I used to do in the past for all those of you who rightly boycott FB, but let's face it, it's just not in my nature to ever be concise enough to tweet successfully.

Flickr update is also imminent, btw, maybe this news is of interest to those of you who still mainly remember me for sporting industrial insulation tape on nipples and other shit we used to do on Fotolog in the early noughties for reasons I now ABSOLUTELY cannot remember.

NEVER MIND.. on to more important matters now: Art that doesn't suck. We'll start with painter, sculptor and engraver genius Max Klinger.

Max Klinger. We had him here back in 2008 with two examples from his magnificent dream-inspired Paraphrases about the Finding of a Glove series from 1881.

Now the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Strasbourg is presenting a vast range of his engravings in a show called Max Klinger - The Theatre of the Bizarre which, as the title suggests, hopes to focus on how Klinger was forever driven by dream imagery and the relentless search for ways to visualise the cryptic, the elusive, the primordial, the eldritch, the uncharted, the subconscious.

Strasbourg hasn't sent me the press login through yet but with the museum's graphic arts room housing nearly 200 of Klinger's engravings, I can guarantee you that you will find some fantastic oneiric trouvailles at this retrospective.

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December 26, 2011 -- 20 Most Popular Posts on Wurzeltod in 2011To wrap up 2k11 on the Wurzelblog, I decided to post the 20 articles you guys liked best - according to likes, shares and reactions - and I must say, you've got a rather amazing and futureproof taste ...

October 13, 2011 -- Confessions of an Ill-Fitting MaskSometimes I write notes on Facebook - of all places - and sometimes they get really long so I thought I might post this one here as well because there's a certain lack of personal articles here. Thank...

Announcements of new Heffernan shows (thank you, Phantasmaphile!) are always a good excuse for me to go for a dive in the endless pool of her archived works - and realise that Booty(see image above and below) remains my favourite series to date.

And although I'm not entirely sure which of her flora-and-fauntastical self-portraits will be on show at the Infinite Work in Progress solo show, the well-chosen title and the fact that there's over 20 works on display both suggest that the probability that you'll get to see something from the Booty series is mathematically speaking relatively high.

I know I normally tend to post free exhibitions here but yes, I would still say that it's worth the $12 (OUCH, Y THOUGH?!) admission fee.

May 19, 2011 -- Francesca Lowe at Riflemaker, LondonUPDATE MAY 23, 2011: Please see a few impressions of the show from my Flickr:
Ascend by Francesca Lowe, oil on canvas, 2010 - click to enlarge
I'm very excited about Frances...

I don't think I ever had a) an exhibition announcement for Overland Park, Kansas and b) so little information on a show as there seems to be neither preview nor press release for Allison Schulnik's Nerman Museum show so I guess it's just an uhmm.. exhibition of Allison Schulnik's video work? Yay. ¬_¬

From the three images on the museum website, all I can gather is that more recent works will be on show as the pictures are all stills from her Mound video that the museum recently acquired and which you can see below.

So if you're planning to check it out, do share your impressions so I can update this post.

WurzelRandomizer®

November 19, 2005 -- Und unten zerschellt das Gerippe
Danse Macabre (detail) at the Rittersche Palast in Lucerne, founded by Archbishop Carlo Borromeo from Milano in 1577 - click to enlarge
Being a rather unnostalgic person who's often terribly thri...

June 10, 2004 -- For Jonathan(... who dearly misses the Land of the Rising Tentacle...)(*gnwaaarggwwwraggglllll* - click on image to enlarge)Guaranteed Eel-Friendly Links1Breathtakingly beautiful Japanese shunga gallery - featuri...

April 3, 2009 -- 'Interface: Nature' at NURTUREart, Brooklyn
The Dodo and Mauritius Island, Imaginary Encounters by Harri Kallio, 2001-2004
An artist who devotes his precious time creating faux dodos (dodi? o_O) to make us believe that they still exist and...

To be perfectly honest with you, I would even post about this show if I didn't like a single artwork on display other than Fake Death Picture (The Death of Chatterton)(top) because channeling my favourite accidental (?) suicide painting of all time will always get you a mention on here.

For Addio del Passato, British-born Nigerian artist Yinka Shonibare has once again worked with his signature fabrics and created beautifully lavish costumes in bold colours and absolutely delectable opulent interiors achieving a gorgeous chiaroscuro of fabrics, textures and complexions so rich that you're almost forgetting you're actually looking at scenes of death. Well, at least a series of photographic re-enactments of famous death and suicide scenes of art history.

Overall, I will have to admit that I preferred the works from Yinka's Goya phase but you know me - I just like to complain.

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May 15, 2008 -- Yinka Shonibare MBE at James Cohan, NY: Final Days
The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters (Asia), by Yinka Shonibare MBE, 2008 (après Goya)
Final chance for New Yorkers to see Yinka Shonibare MBE's glorious Prospero's Monsters exhibition at James ...

Ah, I missed the glorious opportunity to tie this post in with my recent article on Hisaji Hara - it would have been a very smooth and insightful transition as both Nazif and Hisaji sure are experts in the complex inner workings and psychopathologies of Balthusesque girlhood.

Nazif has a particularly great eye for all those (mind) games girls play and he uses the anachronistic form of the tableau vivant as his artistic modus operandi and way to study these games.

The details of the scenes are staggering too and always spot on: We see seductively parted lips, extruding collar bones, golden glowing skin - youth doesn't come much more beckoning than as it's captured in Nazif's work.

It's also fascinating to observe that his group scenes never seem staged, but narrated; his girls are never exposed but embedded; they are not vulnerable and exploited but self-conscious and very much in charge of the scene - in one sentence: They have definitely grown up.

In a way, it could be argued that Nazif is just as much a director or a choreographer as he is a photographer because getting these nuances right is something that has a lot to do with understanding every single bone and muscle of the body and face - and that's also precisely what gives his tableaux a very painterly, very warm, very intimate, very incarnate and very baroque atmosphere.

I know it's probably rather unlikely you are in the United Arab Emirates right now but if you ARE, do go check out his very comprehensive solo show at Green Art Gallery in Dubai until March 5. Details below.

February 18, 2012 -- Hisaji Hara at Michael Hoppen Gallery, London
A Study of "Because Cathy taught him what she learnt" by Hisaji Hara, 2010 - click to enlarge
I think it must have been the lovely Nana Rapeblossom who first introduced me to Hisaji Hara's work...

However, Gisèle's Olimpias are a lot less grotesque and hyperreal than the Chapman's creations but more cracked and broken in their appearance and there's a subtle sense of mutilated and traumatised individuality in her adolescents' intimidated stares and serious outfits.

39 dolls will be on show as an installation accompanied by a beautifully shot photographic documentation of Gisèle's work with and on them.

Also on show will be Gisèle's and Dennis' newest theatrical piece which was produced in collaboration with Stephen O'Malley of SunnO))) fame (working on sound as well as wall drawing designs) entitled Last Spring: A Prequel(a trailer has not emerged yet, sadly, but will be added to this post later).

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http://www.wurzeltod.ch/?p=2064222902#commentsWed, 22 Feb 2012 13:29:53 +0000Suzannehttp://www.wurzeltod.ch/?p=2064222902We interrupt this broadcast to bring you this important intergalactic message from the data highway/PoE:

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July 13, 2011 -- 6 Things To Keep You Company In Desperate TimesAs I'm trying my best to deal with an ever mounting misanthropy and overall sickness provoked by an insane amount of existential bullshit thrown at me while being repeatedly kicked in the guts and bra...

In my early childhood, when we visited the fairgrounds in late autumn with a bag of Marroni (roasted chestnuts) warming my little hands, my mum would always tell me about how, when she was my age, the Halbstarke("half-strongs"/"semi-toughs" - a movement both popularised and simplified by the movie Teenage Wolfpack) used to hang out near fairgrounds, looking intimidating, cool and... desirable.

Growing up in the 80s with unsightly skinny kids in stonewashed neon jeans and perms occupying fairgrounds, it always sounded like a completely different world to me and my imagination turned the Halbstarke into some half-men/half-wolves - pillaging and ravaging everything in their way that hasn't fainted with hysteria yet.

In my teens - after studying the not unsimilar life and career of Swiss photographer genius and car crash fetishist Arnold Odermatt - I came across the photographic work of self-taught photographer and previous factory worker Karlheinz Weinberger(1921 - 2006 - GIVE THE MAN A WIKI PAGE!) and it took another year or two to link the stories my mother had told me to the hauntingly powerful yet disarming Weinberger portraits and to realise that post-WWII Switzerland really wasn't just all quaint and perfect but riddled with very diverse youth movements creating their very own eclectic aesthetic. An aesthetic that would some decades later inspire and influence the Swiss punk, post-punk and goth movements.

Until mid-March, Galerie Esther Woederhoff in Paris is showing a vast selection of works by Weinberger in an exhibition entitled Rebels. They're absolutely incredible snapshots of an often forgotten youth movement - shot partially in Weinberger's own pretty bourgeois living room - putting them in the very same Bildungsbürgertum environment they wanted to liberate themselves from - or in the great outdoors snogging in forests, riding pimped bikes, displaying their DIY gear, and just generally being totally badass, fierce and very un-Swiss.

A motive that's particularly prevalent throughout Weinberger's work is the focus on the display of male genitalia. Halbstarke developed their very own style, distressing jeans by taking zips out, replacing them with bolts or string and therefore setting a very deliberate phallic accent to their attire. Having worked for "Der Kreis" (AGAIN, GIVE THEM A WIKI PAGE!), a homoerotic magazine published by a Zurich club of the same name that even dared to publish highly critical material during the Nazi era, Weinberger was well versed in an aesthetic celebrating the sensuous youthful male.

However, he documented the halbstarke females in an equally admiring way and his portraits of girls with outrageously backcombed hair, kohl cat eyes, animal print or boldly striped jumpers, very tight waistlines and a lot of chuzpe show a great amount of empathetic closeness to their cause. He was on their side without being one of them.

Analysing the stylistic elements that made you halbstark, it's actually very interesting observing how certain elements broke with gender stereotypes while others enforced them with a shitload of testosterone:

For the guys this meant that the Hollywood version of the quiff was often grown longer and softened to look rather effeminate, jeans and leather jackets were often short and revealing but this was then counterbalanced with the masculinity of scary Hell's Angelesque back patches and of course the infamous horseshoe used as pendant - which was like the heavyweight 50s grandfather of the safety pin/pentagram/ankh.

The girls too walked a dual path both enforcing and breaking visual gender roles being the hourglass femme fatale only to adapt to a very tomboyish look and borrowing their boyfriend's horseshoes, jackets and bandanas the next day.

It was a fantastic and great experimentation ground for the days to come and a lot of it has survived until today - particularly in the goth, crust punk and biker movements. A political movement or not, a lot of the Halbstarke later joined the youth revolts of the late 60s and they have changed the visual landscape of Switzerland for good. Thankfully.

I think it must have been the lovely Nana Rapeblossom who first introduced me to Hisaji Hara's work a few months back and I must admit that it comes as a bit of a surprise to see him showing at Michael Hoppen now.

Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against Hoppen as it's a fantastic gallery with superb curating and as a matter of fact, they're also hosting a marvellous Guy Bourdin show at Hoppen Contemporary right now - but it seems I had just subconsciously assumed that for his first solo show on European soil, he would choose a museum rather than gallery context given his penchant for highly composed arrangements and established European painters, especially (and obviously)Balthus.

A Study of "But it was one of their chief amusements to run away to the moors" by Hisaji Hara, 2010 - click to enlarge

There's softened spatial serenity, composed simplicity, powdered sexuality, layered architecture, and ahistorical frozen theatricality to his works which are all aspects that are becoming ever rarer in a contemporary photography landscape which often seems dominated by the ironic dirty scenester snapshot so it's a huge joy and inspiration to see such works being appreciated "over here". Definitely a must-see for all London folks.